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I’ve kinda hated every new incarnation of Shit [Fill-In-The-Blank] People Say with greater intensity until I saw this video. Maybe it’s cuz Asian Moms are funnier than the rest of us. But this right here is TRUTH:

“NO SHAKY LEG!!!” reminds me of the time my cousin, when she was 7 years old, told me her HAM told her that shaking your leg at the table meant you were a slut. Or, in the words of this vid, someone who goes out “every day tryna have the sex.”

After all these years posing as Rupert Murdoch’s young, hot trophy wife–even going so far as to bear Murdoch two daughters so the “marriage” seemed legitimate–Wendi Deng Murdoch totally blew her cover this morning and exposed her real role in Rupert’s life, as his own private stone face killa (that’s her in the pink jacket, keeping a foam-pie wielding attacker away from Rupert, who’s the bald head seated at the table in front of her):

Damn, y’all, damn.

If our government knows what’s good for them, they’re recruiting Wendi and Rupert’s two young daughters, ages 9 and 6, for some off-the-books black ops shit right now. Don’t be fooled by those pretty smiles–those baby teeth will cutchu good.

…if we’d been raised in some fucked-up alternate universe where there are no rules, grades, or words like “unacceptable,” “disown,” and “failure”; no forced violin and piano lessons; no math workbooks during summer vacation; no aspirations for NASA or the Nobel; no Hardass Asian Dads forbidding hot pants, high-heeled boots, and hooker poses; no Hardass Asian Moms screaming at us about looking cheap, about how “low-class” tanning is and how make-up prematurely ages your skin not to mention how all this correlates–somehow, don’t ask–with poorer test scores, lower income, and an overall decrease in college, marriage, and life prospects, really.

I got my mom a nice flower arrangement for Mother’s Day this year, but I didn’t get it together until the last minute, so I paid through the nose for it. I didn’t FTD that shit either–not that I’m judging if you did–because, to me, their arrangements all look like hospital flowers. (Also, I am stupid and like doing things the hard way.) So I found a florist in a fancy schmancy part of Houston who 1) actually picked up the phone late Saturday and 2) would deliver to where my parents live in the middle of nowhere. I also specified that peonies be in the arrangement, because roses are so boring. The delivery to BFN was almost half the cost of the arrangement, and they charged me extra for the peonies, because non-boring flowers don’t come cheap, apparently. Like I said, I like doing things the hard way.

But who cares? It was Mother’s Day. And I love my mama, and she loves flowers.

The Mother's Day Bouquet I Sent: Are those ROSES I see in my GD peony arrangement?

And sure enough, when she received them, she immediately sent me an email to let me know how much she liked them. The subject heading was “Flower of Love” (cue the Huey Lewis song if you’re old like me):

She got them on time! And they were beautiful! And I was thrilled that my mother could feel loved and celebrated without a worry in the world on her special day, which is how all mothers should feel on Mother’s Day.

But clearly, I underestimated my Hardass Asian Mom. Here’s what followed in her email:

After two days in which Chaffee’s daughter was on her own, a friend of the girl’s found out about her situation, told his family, who then took her in and called the cops. When Chaffee returned from her work trip, she was arrested and charged with child endangerment.

The official DISGRASIAN response to this story is that this is terrible, just terrible. What kind of mom does that? What if something bad had happened? What kind of meals did Chaffee leave? Were they delicious? Kidding! This is seriously very serious, and none of this is funny. At all. Thank goodness nothing happened to the girl, and she, as well as her bad mom, will be in our prayers.

Three years ago, when Diana and I were kicking around book ideas, there was one that rose to the top for us, one we thought was pure gold. Its working title was: “How to Raise a Child Prodigy.” Although neither of us were prodigies–a fact that filled us both with regret–and neither of us were parents yet, we felt qualified to write the book anyway, because we were products of Hardass Asian Parenting, which was no different, in our minds, from Prodigy Parenting (see: the long, ever-expanding list of Asian prodigies). Plus, we imagined the book as a way to talk about what it’s like to be Asian American without getting heavy, a way to laugh at ourselves, something honest but still tongue-in-cheek. Of course there would be some non-Asians, aspirational parents in particular, who would buy the book for parenting tips and take it seriously…suckas!

Only we never wrote it. We started it as a blog, set to private, but didn’t get beyond a couple of entries. In hindsight, our lack of follow-through shines a light on two rather important details: 1) why we weren’t prodigies in the first place and 2) why we weren’t qualified at all to write the book. During that time, we did manage to bang out a long list of child-rearing ideas, ideas we’d been exposed to personally that we planned to explore in our little parenting guide. A selection of those ideas appears below, from a document dated March 2008:

As with every culture, the Japanese have words that are difficult to translate into other languages. Most well-known among them are honne, one’s “true feelings and desires,” and tatemae, “the behavior and opinions one displays in public.” There’s also a Japanese word, yoko meshi, for the “stress induced by speaking a foreign language.”

Known for: Committing herself to Number One by proposing… to herself. Chen wants to puncture the perception of single women as something to look down on–so at age 30, having not yet met anyone else she wants to spend her life with, she has decided to marry her own bad self.

For the 30-year-old Taipei resident, there will be no Prince Charming, no tuxedoed groom. In an effort to defy the traditional Asian perception of single, independent women as failures, Chen says she will marry herself.

“Age 30 is a prime period for me,” Chen is quoted by Reuters as saying. “My work and experience are in good shape, but I haven’t found a partner, so what can I do?”

I have two male cousins that were born to and raised by the most intense woman I’ve ever met–my mom’s oldest sister. She’s my tough-as-nails, crazy-as-a-chicken, Hardass Asian Aunt and one Meanass Asian Mom. She probably thinks General McChrystal is a total pussy. Lady is intense.

In my aunt’s house, no drinks were consumed by children before their entire dinner (like a two-gallon bowl of Pho) was completely finished. Football games were not attended. Slumber parties were off limits. Piano was practiced at least two hours a day. The icing on the cake? No birthdays were celebrated, either. No parties, no presents, nothin’.

I always imagined that if I had grown up in that house, I would have spent most of my time huddled in my bedroom, pretending to study or folding my clothes. In my alone time I would’ve thrown myself countless imaginary birthday parties, given myself infinite imaginary gifts, blown out hundreds of imaginary birthday candles. Why? Because sometimes it’s nice to celebrate being alive.

Anyway, the moral of this story is… well, there is no moral. And, to be perfectly honest, my parents threw me lots of nice birthday parties, and as a result I have blown out A LOT of trick candles in my day. I didn’t have to throw myself imaginary parties. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give myself a birthday present, because dammit, it’s my birthday today! Woohoo!

Y’all. If you’ve ever thought your own Hardass Asian Mom was tough on you, more often your toughest critic than your biggest fan, quicker to point out your failings than your strengths, more likely to greet you with a laundry list of reasons as to why you fell on your face when you fell on your face rather than a band-aid for your boo-boo-ed ego, then the letter below is for you.

But first, some background. Eddie Huang (pictured) is the Taiwanese American chef/owner of two restaurants in New York, Baohaus and the recently opened Xiao Ye. Xiao Ye received a terrible review in the NY Times this week, wherein Sam Sifton, while lauding some of Huang’s dishes, compared the taste of one dish to that of “cardboard and water,” and wrote that another “might have been made by your college roommate in a borrowed Crock-Pot one night over winter break, then discarded in favor of Greek pizza from that place out by the discount liquor store.” E.T. said OUCH!

Hi Eddie,
So what do you think about this review. I feel it is a review of your life. It sounds so familiar to The Food Net Work competition Judge’s comments. I guess you never registered all the opinions from those professionals who have seen so many people working toward their success. There is a reason why the other guy won. Good taste, Continue reading Is There Any Tougher Critic Than Your Hardass Asian Mom?